


Two Special Pieces of Plastic

by Phandabbydosey



Series: Deaf Dan Oneshots [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Deaf, Deaf Character, Disability, Disabled Character, Fire, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9368168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phandabbydosey/pseuds/Phandabbydosey
Summary: Dan is the worst person in the world to need hearing aids and Phil really should have thought to get an adapted fire alarm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is phandabbydosey if you would rather read this over there :D

Dan was the worst person in the world to need hearing aids.

Thanks to a birth defect, Dan was completely deaf in both ears. He spent most of his childhood in silence, only communicating through sign language and following films with the aid of subtitles. He was ‘that weird deaf kid’, an identity that earned him a friendless and lonely school life.

Things improved when Dan was in year 8 and a revolutionary new hearing aid was approved for clinical trials. Knowing how much his deafness had socially crippled him - something she’d truly learned the severity of one heartbreaking afternoon when she found his journal - Dan’s mother had signed him up for the trails the moment Dan’s doctor suggested it.

Dan had been so excited at the prospect of finally being able to hear, when his mum had carefully explained everything through sign language, he’d let a loud noise of joy and hugged her so tightly she’d had to peel him off her so she didn’t suffocate. He’d spent the rest of the weeks leading up to his visit to the specialist clinic bouncing around the house and making all sorts of happy noises. In the days before the trip, Dan was so excited he ended up signing things so fast even his mum, who was almost as good as Dan was at sign language, had to get him repeat things at least three times.

Thankfully, Dan’s anticipation had been well placed. The day he and his parents drove three hours to reach the special Otology, was the day that a twelve year old boy finally heard his mother’s voice for the first time thanks to two very special pieces of plastic.

Things were still lousy at school. Dan couldn’t speak and people would sometimes pull his hearing aids out. He was still an outcast but Dan didn’t seem to care so much anymore.

He was learning to talk and understand other people talking, he could hear the music on tv programmes and the cars rushing past as he walked to school. He could hear for the first time in his life, and no amount of bullies or teasing could take that away from him.

—————————————————–

Over a decade later, Dan’s life was almost unrecognisable. He had over three million subscribers on YouTube, a show on one of the most popular radio stations in the country and he lived in an expensive London apartment with the most perfect boyfriend in the world.

Meeting Phil had been one of the best things to ever happen to Dan; it was even on par with the miracle hearing aids.

He’d given Dan something that no doctors or treatments or pieces of plastic ever could; a friend. A friend who boosted his confidence and didn’t care how different he was. A friend who dealt with all of Dan’s problems. A friend who eventually fell in love with him and gave him a happiness that no one else could.

Even though Dan could hear just fine with the aids and had long since learned how to talk properly, Phil had still taken the time to learn sign language, knowing that sometimes it was needed because, as previously stated, Dan really was the worst person to need hearing aids.

Dan was forgetful and clumsy and lazy, traits that were never going to be helpful for a guy who needed two very small, very delicate pieces of medical equipment to hear. He always took them out overnight or on long car journeys because they did make his ears ache after extended periods of time, but this led to them constantly being left on the nightstand or in the glovebox of the car. He’d even managed to leave them on an aeroplane once, meaning he had to go to Vidcon without them and have Phil translate everything for him into sign language. The fans had been pretty good about it, but it’d still made things ten times more difficult than they needed to be.

Dan had also managed to sit on, step on and drop his hearing aids enough times that he now had to pay the doctor every time he needed a replacement, they couldn’t afford to keep giving him them for free. Luckily, he and Phil had plenty of money so that wasn’t a problem, but Phil still teased him about the fact that he was too clumsy for even the NHS to handle.

But Dan was by far the worst when it came to Phil going away. Phil didn’t leave Dan home alone very often, mostly due to the fact that Dan was hopeless at remembering to put his hearing aids back in when there was no one else there to remind him. He’d leave them on the nightstand when he got up to get breakfast, then just use the subtitles on the tv because he was too lazy to go back and get them.

This had led to a lot of important phone calls and packages being missed because Dan just didn’t hear the phone or the doorbell ringing. However, he certainly did hear the row Phil would give him whenever he came home to find annoyed messages from the BBC on their answering machine.

They’d discussed installing special doorbells and phones for deaf people and were slowly getting around to buying them, but there was one thing neither Phil nor Dan had ever realised they’d need, something Phil would probably never overlook again. A specially adapted fire alarm.

Phil had gone to Florida with his family for a few weeks, leaving Dan with the usual instructions to  _please please please_  remember his hearing aids. He knew it wouldn’t work, but he always said it just in case.

Dan had seemed to be doing pretty well though; he’d been wearing his hearing aids every time he Skyped Phil and hadn’t missed the doorbell when their new lighting equipment arrived.

Phil’s trip flew by and, soon enough, it was the day he was due to come home. His flight was arriving at a god awful time so he’d told Dan to just go to bed with the promise he’d wake him up when he got home.

Dan had gone through his usual routine of taking his hearing aids out, brushing his teeth and going to bed, not thinking to check that everything was turned off in the living room. He didn’t know that the mouse they still hadn’t gotten rid of had taken a bite out of some of the cabling and that by accidentally leaving a lamp on, he’d left an exposed, live wire resting against the back of the sofa. All it took was a spark to produce a small flame that slowly started to eat up the fabric of the sofa.

It didn’t take long for the blaze to build up, devouring his and Phil’s possessions while Dan slept on in the room down the hall. The fire alarm blared, rousing everyone in the building and alerted them to the danger, everyone other than the deaf boy who was all alone.

Dan started to cough in his sleep, his face scrunching up as the smoke that was slowly filling the flat made it’s way into his lungs. By the time he woke up, the air was so heavy with acrid gas that his eyes instantly starting to burn. Confused, disoriented and scared, Dan’s shaking hands grabbed his hearing aids off the bedside table and put them in, wincing as the shrill ringing of the fire alarm finally registered with his broken ears.

“Shit,” he whispered, falling into a coughing fit so harsh it made his eyes water.

Getting to his feet, Dan blundered over to the door and grabbed the handle, only to screech and jerk his hand away seconds later. He could feel his hand blistering as he stumbled back from the door looking down at the glowing red handle and the flickering orange light visible through the crack at the bottom of the door.

The fire was right outside his bedroom door. He was trapped and alone in a smoke filled room, his phone and laptop in the living room and Phil somewhere out in the cold night outside on his way home. Dan leant against the wall and let himself slide down into a sitting position, coughing raggedly.

“I love you Phil,” he whispered, letting his eyes fall shut and a single tear roll down his cheek as he gave up. He knew was going to die here, and there was nothing he could do to save himself.

—————————————–

Phil frowned as he turned the corner on his street to find flashing blue lights, a large crowd and the smell of burning. It was three in the morning, why were so many people outside? Why was it so bright and why did it smell so bad?

Even though he was jetlagged and exhausted, it didn’t take long for Phil to work out what happened and, once he had, he dropped his suitcase and sprinted down the street towards the crowd and the fire engine. He recognised the other residents of his and Dan’s building and one glance at the burning structure told him the inferno was in their own flat, making Phil feel like his stomach had hit the floor.

“Dan!” he shouted, shoving his way through the crowd and searching for the brown hair and eyes of his boyfriend, not caring that he was being rude. He wasn’t there though. Dan wasn’t there, which meant…

He was still in the flat. The burning flat.

“Nononono,” Phil babbled, his body starting to shake as tears pour down his cheeks, soaking the skin in a matter of seconds, “Dan.”

Phil’s knees were about to buckle when the door to the building crashed open, a crowd of firemen tumbling out along with a cloud of black smoke. One was hobbled slightly by a lanky, limp boy cradled in his arms. A boy whose tanned skin was blackened with soot and a boy who had little pieces of plastic in his ears. Dan.

“Dan!” Phil cried jovially, rushing over to the fireman and almost fainting from relief when he saw the warm brown irises he loved so much through Dan’s half open eyes. His eyes were open, his chest was moving. Dan was alive.

“Ph-il,” Dan coughed, a small smile making it’s way onto his grubby face before the fireman carrying him interrupted the boys.

“Sorry mate, but we really need to get him to the ambulance. You can ride with him but we need to get him there quick,” the man said firmly, though he had a gentle smile on his face as he saw the sweet reunion.

Phil nodded and followed the fireman, trembling slightly from relief as he watched Dan being placed onto the gurney while a paramedic put an oxygen mask onto his face before ushering Phil in. Phil obliged quickly and soon they were rushing towards the hospital.

“He’s going to be fine,” the paramedic smiled gently while she attended to Dan’s badly burnt hand, “He’s inhaled a lot of smoke but he’s still awake, which is a very good sign. We’ll just need to dress his hand and keep an eye on him, but he’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Phil breathed, sending the paramedic a grateful smile before turning his attention back to Dan.

“You silly goose,” he laughed sadly, leaning down and kissing Dan’s cheek before  sweeping his dirty fringe away from his eyes. He saw Dan open his mouth and quickly started speaking again. He could tell from the look in Dan’s eyes that he was going to try and apologise but Phil had already worked out what happened, “Shush, no talking for you now. You’re going to say sorry which is stupid because this isn’t your fault. It’s not your fault you couldn’t hear the alarm and, unless you ran around with a lighter and lit everything on fire, then the fire wasn’t your fault either. Okay?”

Dan smiled tiredly up at Phil through the mask reaching out with his uninjured hand to weakly hold onto Phil’s. “I-I love you,” he rasped, coughing weakly but looking at Phil with pure adoration.

“I love you too Dan,” Phil whispered, kissing his hand then running his thumb over Dan’s knuckles, “I love you so much.”


End file.
